Courthouse Action, Day Two

I was at the courthouse for a couple of hours yesterday, but the hearing was being conducted backstage, you might say, and I left a little before noon. I have been told that lawyers argued their positions before the judge in the afternoon, and that the case will continue later in the month. In the meantime,The Gazette kept a reporter on the scene, and they have a wrap-up of the day's events.

A Montgomery County judge ruled Wednesday that opponents missed a February deadline to oppose the first batch of signatures introduced to put to referendum a new county law intended to protect transgendered individuals from discrimination.

However, the court battle continued Thursday as parties argued whether enough signatures were valid to put the issue up for a vote.

Jonathan Shurberg, an attorney representing Equality Maryland, argued the Montgomery County Board of Elections erred in calculating 25,001 signatures were needed because it calculated ``active voters" instead of ``registered voters" as appeared to be required by state law.

In addition, Shurberg argued that many of the signatures validated by the elections board should not be counted. He introduced a sheet showing several signatures from different people that all appeared to be signed by the same person who circulated the petition. State law also requires those signing petitions to sign their name as it appears on the voter registration form with either the person's full name or middle initial.

Attorney Kevin Karpinski, representing the elections board, said that the state board only requires the county board to verify the signatures by making sure they are registered voters.

It is not their job to determine if the signatures were all signed by the same person, he said. Opponents of new transgender law win first round

Read that last sentence again. The Board of Elections is saying it's not their job to "determine if the signatures were all signed by the same person."

This is an interesting situation. Everybody on both sides understands that the petitions for a referendum to re-legalize discrimination are bogus. I've looked at them, lawyers on both sides have looked at them, the judge has seen them, they are full of bad signatures. The Citizens for Responsible Whatever did not have enough legal signatures to put a referendum on the ballot, and neither side wants to say they did. The Board of Elections certified the signatures because the names corresponded to names of registered voters, that's all.

That's their case.

A group of citizens sued the Board, saying they should not have allowed the referendum to go forward because the Board didn't really check the petitions, and the Board's defense is, so what? It's not our job to check them.

You gotta admit, that's pretty bold.

The good guys come back at that one, too.

But Shurberg argued that some of the names approved on the petition by the county board were not even registered voters.

If Circuit Judge Robert A. Greenberg decided upon either issue in favor of Equality Maryland, the Citizens for Responsible Government would not have enough signatures to have the referendum on the ballot.

The group opposed to the county’s discrimination law, passed unanimously by the County Council and signed by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), collected about 32,000 signatures though the elections board said it needed 25,001 to have the necessary 5 percent of the county’s active voters. He also contended previous court cases require election boards to base the number of signatures off registered voters and not active voters.

The list of registered voters would be significantly higher than so-called active voters so the amount of signatures required also would be much higher.

There are a lot of issues on the table here, aren't there? This last thing is interesting. There are registered voters, and there are active voters. As I understand it, if you don't vote for a couple of years you're still registered but they don't consider you "active." So next time you go back you'll have to show some ID, sign up again, I don't know what. Anyway, it turns out that the Board of Elections told the CRW they needed 25,001 signatures, based on the number of active voters in the county, when they were supposed to use the number of registered voters. That could turn out to be a big deal.

The Gazette summarizes from the first day:

Shurberg argued roughly 12,500 of the 32,000 signatures collected by the group failed to meet all of the requirements of the state for a referendum petition.

But Greenberg’s initial ruling that the challenge was issued too late for the first batch of signatures turned in knocked the number of disputed signatures down to 6,250.

Equality Maryland would appeal if it loses on the other issues because the elections board had not notified the public it had validated the first batch of signatures until well after the 10 days allowed to challenge them had passed, Shurberg said.

‘‘How do you know when you’re supposed to act?” he said. By not informing the public the first batch of signatures had been validated, it violated the due process rights of the public.

State law only requires the elections board notify the sponsors of the petition that it had certified the signatures and not the public, Karpinski said.

Greenberg also threw out a challenge to the referendum that the wording from the Citizens for Responsible Government was confusing and incorrectly stated what the county had passed.

It's not mentioned here, but I have been told that Judge Greenberg also ruled to give the Citizens for a Responsible Government standing in the case, which the Board of Elections wanted. I missed the arguments on that, but maybe somebody will brief us in the comments.

It seems to me that this story has become quite interesting in a surprising way. The Board of Elections was sued because they hadn't really checked the signatures. Their defense is that it's not their job to check the signatures.

That means that anybody can pick up a phone book and copy the names onto a sheet of paper, submit it to the Board and have any law put to a referendum vote. If you copy enough of them, there will be a sufficient number of registered voters, and that's all that matters.

The interesting thing is that even the Board of Elections refuses to argue that the signatures are in fact good ones. Everybody knows they're junk, the legal question is whether the Board of Elections is supposed to ensure that only legitimate signatures are counted. You'd think that'd be part of their job, wouldn't you?